What actually happened yesterday
(Note to reader: If you are looking for an impassioned, uplifting tirade against yesterday’s judgement, this isn’t it. This is, I presume, something no one wants to say or rather, hear right now.)
(All of my big talk and research comes from the internet. So, I agree that some of it might be partly inaccurate and could have come from questionable sources.)
Yesterday, The Supreme Court passed a judgement re-criminalising sex of the ‘un-natural’ nature between two consenting adults.
Yesterday, a Supreme Court Chief Justice (rather predictably) took the convenient stand as opposed to the thorny right one.
Yesterday, for the millionth time religious leaders appeared on News debates and said: HOW MAN MAN MAKE BABY? INDIAN VALUES… GOOOOD! WESTERN CULTURE… BAAAD!
Yesterday, 50 couples in Thane got married back-to-back because 11.12.13! YAY!
Yesterday, stupidity reigned supreme.
It kept me up all night. Digging through every news report, article and debate I could get my hands on, all of them saying the same things in different words. I felt like a mad scientist. The video that set it all of was this one:
For those of you who have lazily skipped the video, it has Justice Singhvi (the afore-mentioned Supreme Court Chief Justice) saying (and I’m only paraphrasing), “Booyah! I’m not answering any of your questions till you read my 3,426 pages long report! Na na-na na-na!”
Guess what, Justice Singhvi, I did read it. I read the whole damn thing:
And here’s my question: WHAT THE FUCK, MAN??
This report could also be called How To Retire Peacefully Without Offending Anyone (Other Than The People Who Are Right Of Course). Shrouded in cringe-worthy political correctness, here are some highlights:
The family law in England has undergone a drastic change and recognised new social relationships between man and woman. In our country, however, even today a marriage is an arranged affair. We do not say that there are no exceptions to this practice or that there is no tendency, however imperceptible, for young persons to choose their own spouses, but even in such cases the consent of their parents is one of the desiderata which is sought for.
So the ‘tendency’ for young persons to choose their own spouse is still ‘imperceptible’ in today’s times. Forget a spouse of the same sex. Amongst many reasons to having passed this judgement, the bench cites ‘laconic’ (that means insufficient in English) information provided by the original petitioner and this gem:
In its anxiety to protect the so-called rights of LGBT persons and to declare that Section 377 violates the right to privacy, autonomy and dignity, the High Court has extensively relied upon the judgments of other jurisdictions. Though these judgments shed considerable light on various aspects of this right and are informative in relation to the plight of sexual minorities, we feel that they cannot be applied blindfolded for deciding the constitutionality of the law enacted by the Indian legislature. No doubt, an objective and rational deduction of a principle, if it emerges from a decision of a foreign country, rendered on pari materia legislative provisions and which can be applicable to the conditions prevailing in this country will assist the court in arriving at a proper conclusion. While we should seek light from whatever source we can get, we should however guard against being blinded by it.
WHAT WHAT??
Perhaps the only takeaway from the report is this:
(The 172nd Law Commission, year 2000) specifically recommended deletion of Section 377 of the IPC, and the issue has repeatedly come up for debate. However, the Legislature has chosen not to amend the law or revisit it. This shows that Parliament, undisputedly the representative body of the people of India, has not thought it proper to delete the provision.
This is the excerpt, from the 172nd Law Commissions report mentioned above written all the way back in 2000.
After detailed discussions with these organisations, the Commission has recommended changes for widening the scope of the offence in section 375 and to make it gender neutral. Various other changes have been recommended in sections 376, 376A to 376D. We have also recommended insertion of a new section 376F dealing with unlawful sexual contact, deletion of section 377 of the IPC and enhancement of punishment in section 509 of the IPC. In order to plug the loopholes in procedural provisions, we have also recommended various changes in the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 and in the Evidence Act, 1872.
Now here’s the sad truth.
HOMOSEXUALITY WAS NEVER DECRIMINALIZED.
And I don’t mean this in the gay-rights-will-be-won-not-in-courts-of-law-but-the-hearts-and-minds-of-people way. I mean this in the the-constitution-was-never-fucking-amended way.
98 amendments have been made to the Constitution since 1950 and none of these have been to Section 377. Making amendments to the Constitution requires for a bill to be drafted by a legislative party which then goes through several readings and publications and what not. Needless to say, Section 377 due to it’s very nature, is the elephant in the Parliament that is dutifully swept under the well-worn carpet, time and again.
The unfortunate part about yesterday’s judgement is not all that it wasn’t, it just wasn’t all that it could have been and then lesser than that. Justice Singhvi had a chance to make a brave judgement and go down in history. His choice sadly, will go down in history for all the wrong reasons.
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Now for a minute, forget the courts of the world. None of them can physically stop us (well, not yet at least) from thinking ungentlemanly thoughts about whichever sex we prefer. Let me shake up a misconception here. The misconception that homosexuality, is more widely accepted by India’s burgeoning youth.
This summer, after much deliberation, I went to a school reunion. It was like listening to a long forgotten song whose tune you still somewhat remember. There was nostalgia and laughs aplenty. But then, after a long time, I was surrounded by people who did not know ‘my secret’. Or as a friend rather flatteringly put it: ‘It’s like they were talking about Superman in front of Clark Kent!’ (although I would prefer Bruce Wayne or Peter Parker any day).
From college life to drinking to tyrannical school teachers to a school senior who has become a Kingfisher model, the conversation, inevitably went to Game Of Thrones.
“But you know what the grossest scene was?…
(before going any further let me remind you that this is a TV show where a pregnant woman is stabbed repeatedly in the stomach amongst other similarly creative ways in which people meet their bloody, gruesome ends)
…The one where that guy gives the King a blowjob and you can hear the sound and it’s just ugh…” (shudder)
The others respond with an eager, approving shudder. Someone, helpfully offered:
“You know, I’m cool with people being gay, but the thought of two men kissing just grosses me out!”
I know I oversimplify things when I say this, but isn’t that the whole problem? I was feeling what probably, more then half of the gay population feels all the time.
Where most young people stand on this can be best summarised in Aziz Ansari’s words, “Young people don’t care who marries who. Dude, they can download any movie they want! Whenever they want to!… On their phones!”
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Yesterday, more than anything else, I felt really, really impotent. The cynic inside me says that what all this really means is that we’ve been banging our head against the wrong Ambuja Cement Wall all this time.
But the dreamer inside me (Ah! Naive, naive dreamer me, currently dying a slow painful death) says that there is still hope. In the form of people, who appear on News debates where they are pitted against religious leaders who say HOW MAN MAN MAKE BABY? INDIAN VALUES… GOOOOD! WESTERN CULTURE… BAAAD! People who are relentless in their pursuit of equality, sometimes like stubborn insistent children, sometimes like the proverbial persevering spiders.
There is hope in the form of every person that finds the courage to come out into a world that’s clearly not ready for it.